Living with an invisible illness should be something I am well used to by now. I have had at least three of them in my life time. Each just as debilitating as the last. But realistically I don't think it is something I will ever get used to and hopefully something that I don't have to.
Mid September I was diagnosed with having "Fibromyalgia" however it looks like it is something I was battling against for around a year without a clue.
I finished my 10th big theatre dance show in June 2012. It had been one of the most difficult shows I had ever taken part in. I was plagued with back ache, jarring knee pain and exhaustion. I simply put all these things down to being unfit and slightly over weight. Midway through the shows I developed shin splits and was unable to walk backwards and forwards to my dressing room without help, "It's just the stairs" I told myself and battled through dance number after dance number for 5 days. Come the end of the show I was totally unable to walk and took a week off of dance class to heal but a week later I was back to lessons and finding even the simplest of movements agonising. After half an hour of nothing more than warm up exercises I disappeared out the back door and sat down to compose myself. A quick sip of water and I was back in to the studio and carried on my lesson. This incident repeated for 3 weeks until it was the school holidays. By this point I wasn't leaving my bed at all during the day. Exhaustion washed over me with the slightest of movements and even the simplest of tasks were becoming too much.
I had felt this feeling before, it was all too scarily familiar. Back in 2001 I was diagnosed as having M.E, Otherwise known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I left school when I was 13 and was known as the girl who "Just gets really tired" (if only it was that simple)
Although the familiarity of the tiredness was ringing through my head I had never felt pain quite like this before. The pain seemed to be spreading. The arch of my foot would swell up, the side of my foot would often feel like a sprained ankle. My knees would crack with every movement and the pain would be so intense I felt sick. My hips stung like a knife being drive in to my side. My lower back pain would consistently drive me to tears and my arms would ache so badly I just hung them by my side as if they weren't even attached to my body.
After many tears, sleepless nights and doctors visits I was finally diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. As with M.E, Fibro is characterised by many many MANY different symptoms and no two people will ever have the same ones, but for me everything was suddenly falling in to place.
Those chronic stomach pains and the extreme sickness I was getting from suspected IBS was linked with Fibromyalgia.
The constant sniffing, runny nose and sinus related problems were Rhinitis caused by the Fibromyalgia.
The return of my panic attacks which have plagued me since I was 7 were also caused by the Fibro.
Sadly you can not have a blood test to see if you have Fibromyaliga. You can't simply pee in to a bottle to get your diagnosis and no amount of x-rays will show anything. It is a long, lonely, frustrating road of trial and error to get to the desired conclusion.
Fibromyalgia, M.E, and Depression are just three of the many invisible illnesses that cripple thousands of people every day. Just because someone looks perfectly healthy doesn't mean they aren't suffering on the inside.
